


don't dare (don't you even go there)

by lucylikestowrite



Category: Code Name Verity Series - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fake Character Death, Friends to Lovers, References To Terrorism, femslash exchange 2019, julie is a flight attendant, maddie is still a pilot, not entirely clear when it's set but it's vaguely modern/not ww2, or is she, references to religious extremism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 04:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21368041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucylikestowrite/pseuds/lucylikestowrite
Summary: Maddie didn’t become a pilot to make friends. She became a pilot because nothing made her heart sing like flying, like speeding through the clouds at hundreds of miles an hour.She didn’t become a pilot to make friends, but then Julie Wallace joined her crew, and everything just clicked.
Relationships: Julie Beaufort-Stuart/Maddie Brodatt
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	don't dare (don't you even go there)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shaggydogstail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaggydogstail/gifts).

> i've been super busy with uni work, and i've had a load of writers block, so i'm really sorry if this seems a bit rushed. i have been working on the concept in my head for weeks, but just getting it on the page is. hard. it turns out that making a concept work outside of your head when you've struggled with writing for ages is. hard. i hope i managed some of the mystery and intrigue of their relationship

_Dear Maddie,_

_I'd been planning for this for over a year. Since long before I met you._

_Would you believe I messed up within two days?_

_Julie_

Maddie didn’t become a pilot to make friends. She became a pilot because nothing made her heart sing like flying, like speeding through the clouds at hundreds of miles an hour.

She didn’t become a pilot to make friends, but then Julie Wallace joined her crew, and everything just clicked.

The other girls liked to call her Queenie, and Maddie could see why. There was something incredibly regal about her. It wasn’t just the way she looked - although that certainly helped. Her hair was a bright blonde that could only be natural. Blonde out of a bottle just doesn’t shine a million colours in the sunlight like hers did. All the flight attendants always looked completely put together, but none more than Julie. SHe never had a strand out of place. Her uniform was never creased. Her shoes were never smudged.

But it wasn’t just that. If she had just been beautiful - which, god, she was. Sometimes Maddie wondered if she’d ever met anyone more beautiful.

If she had just been beautiful, everyone would’ve hated her. But she wasn’t. She was… she was everything. She was kind, and she was patient. While she was working, she never lost her patience, no matter how many delays there were. She never appeared bored, not through a single conversation with a passenger.

When she wasn’t working, she was funny. She was hilarious, brash and merciless but in a way that meant no one could do anything but love her.

She read three newspapers every morning - an English one, a French one, and a German one. Whenever they got a chance to talk outside of work, it was clear to Maddie that she was, maybe, one of the most intelligent people she’d ever met.

And she didn’t let anyone question why she was doing the job she was, or suggest anything about any of her colleagues.

The only time Maddie ever saw her raise her voice at work, ever saw a flash of anger behind her eyes - a flash that had surprised her, that had stirred something inside of her stomach - she was used to Julie being animated and passionate outside of work, but never when they were on the clock, and it was more than a little thrilling - was when a passenger had tried to disparage one of the other girls, suggest something about their intelligence, about their career prospects, about how they only got this job because of their __looks__.

Venom dripped from her mouth, sounding oh so sweet in Julie’s perfect accent, but, at the same time, sounding utterly terrifying. Afterwards, Maddie could tell Julie regretted it. She shouldn’t have been that rude to a passenger, but Maddie knows that if anyone on the plane - any of the attendants, any of the other passengers - had been asked, no-one would’ve told on her.

Julie protecting one of her friends was a blazing amazon, an avenging angel.

Maddie fell a little in love with her that day. It didn’t matter, of course. She wasn’t out to anyone. She’d worked hard enough to get where she was - a captain in the nation’s flag carrying airline. Nothing was going to jeopardise that.

She didn’t care how ‘accepting’ people were these days. She didn’t care that, legally, they couldn’t even do anything to her.She was already told she only got the job because she’s a woman. She already got told that the only reason the pilots let her into their fold is because they don’t even see her __as__ a woman. She was already at the mercy of gender and completely devoid of it. She didn’t need another reason to other herself publicly.

That’s what Maddie told herself, for the first six months of her friendship with Julie. A friendship that got unbelievably fast, unbelievably quick. If you let it, that’s what happens when you’re part of a flight crew together.

Wherever in the world you end up, it’s usually late at night. The only people you know are your crew. It’s not hard to fall into easy friendship when the company buys you hotel rooms in a block and you always end up near each other.

It’s not hard when you can buy room service on the company card, when you can essentially have sleepovers like you’re seventeen again.

It’s not hard to fall into friendship.

It was so easy, once they were friends, once they were falling asleep in the same bed, once Maddie got to wake up to see Julie, still looking stupidly perfect, next to her.

But she ignored it. She ignored it like she had ignored every single crush she’d had in the past ten years.

_Dear Maddie,_

_It was the stupidest fucking thing. I was talking with them. I was talking with them, and I mentioned you, and it ruined everything._

_Julie_

She ignored it, until, one day, she let herself have just one thing - a lesbian bar in Paris. A lesbian bar where no-one knew her, knew what her job was, where no-one could use this against her. Where she was completely anonymous. Where, if she wanted, maybe she could go home with someone.

She walked in, and the first thing she saw was Julie. She wanted to turn, to walk away, because this was dangerous, but, at that very moment, Julie looked up. She looked up, and their eyes met, and there was some sort of terrifying recognition.

It was extremely obvious that Julie wasn’t just here for fun, to see what this sort of place was like, because her hand was on a woman’s arm, and it seemed like they’d been chatting animatedly. That is, until Maddie had walked in.

She’d frozen as they’d locked eyes, and she was still frozen, five seconds later. The woman noticed, turned, saw what Julie was staring at, that it was a __who__, and seemed to make an extremely quick realisation that she was no longer the centre of Julie’s attention, moving away with seemingly little regret on her face.

They’d seen each other, but, still, the sensible thing to do would’ve been to leave. Pretend it never happened.

That wasn’t what Maddie did. Instead, she let her legs move her towards Julie, let her sit down next to her.

Neither of them said anything about where they were. It was an unspoken agreement. They just talked, like they normally did. That worked. It worked for an hour. It worked for two hours.

It worked for three hours.

And then the bar was closing, and Maddie didn’t know what to do, didn’t know anything except that Julie had kept on buying drinks and Maddie hadn’t and Julie was leaning so close, so terrifyingly close, and their hotel rooms were next to each other like usual, but Julie followed Maddie into hers - like usual, and collapsed on her bed, next to her, like usual.

Except they both knew it was anything but like usual. They both knew the air was charged with the new knowledge they both had. They could both feel it, taste it, practically touch it.

Julie shifted closer. It was terrifying and exciting at the same time. The potential that, maybe, maybe, Julie felt the same way was overwhelming. She wanted to move closer, to close the gap, to kiss her and run her hands over ever inch of her skin.

She didn't.

Instead, Maddie shifted further away. She went against everything her heart was telling her, and she shifted away.

“It’s not appropriate,” she whispered. “Strictly, I’m your superior. You’re drunk. I’m not.”

Julie mumbled something about Maddie not really being her superior, but she seemed out of it, half drunk and half asleep, so Maddie ignored it. Julie pouted at Maddie's lack of response, but then a few seconds later, her eyelids fluttered closed, black mascara laden eyelashes settling against the porcelain of her skin.

And then she was asleep. Maddie didn’t know how she did it. With her this close, it seemed impossible she was ever going to sleep again. She got up, changed into pyjamas, and then laid down again, Julie inches away. She laid there, in the darkness, wondering if the ease with which Julie had given up meant that she didn't actually care. That she didn't actually feel anything. She'd told Maddie what seemed like hundreds of tales of her quick, casual flirtations with men. Maybe this was no different. Maybe she had only been interested while she thought Maddie might be, and now she wasn't.

With all of this swirling around in her head, sleep still seemed impossible, but, somehow, eventually, she managed it.

When she woke up, Julie wasn’t there, and for a second, Maddie panicked. Panicked that Julie had regretted getting even that close, or, the opposite, that when Maddie had rejected her, she’d decided that it wasn’t worth staying.

Until the ensuite door opened, and Julie walked out, a towel wrapped around her body, another one drying her hair.

“Morning,” Julie said, a wink in her voice, if not on her face.

Maddie swallowed.

Julie moved closer, dropped the towel she’d been using on her hair, and fell onto the bed, her hand resolutely clutching the towel around her body. “I’m not drunk anymore.”

“Uh huh,” Maddie said, furious at herself for not being able to say anything more.

“You’re not actually my __employer__,” Julie said, moving ever closer, until she was crowding into Maddie’s space. She smelled like shampoo, a floral scent that was clouding Maddie’s senses.

“‘m kinda your manager though,” Maddie mumbled, unable to focus on anything but how close they were.

All of her sense flew out the window when Julie placed a hand on her cheek. “Maddie,” she whispered, suddenly deathly serious, all flirtation gone. “I think I’m a little bit in love with you.”

That was it. The floodgates opened. All of her restraint was miles away, probably back in England. She pulled Julie closer, and then their lips joined, and everything was on fire.

The towel fell from Julie’s body, and suddenly there was _so _much skin, millions of miles of it. Julie's fingers quickly found the hem of Maddie's shirt, pulling it over her head, breaking them apart for half a second before falling back together, desperate mouths crashing into one another, messy and hot and a little bleary from sleep.

It didn't matter, though, because soon the sleep was wiped from Maddie's mind. She was awake, more awake than she'd been in years, because every inch of their bodies were touching, and Julie was good at this. So good at this. Maddie didn't have the mental capacity to get jealous of all the other people who'd helped her get this good, because every part of her brain was focused on what was happening right now.

She didn't want it to ever end.

When it did, though, it was almost worth it, because, for a minute, for two minutes, for a seemingly infinite span of seconds, they both just lay their, breathing gradually slowing down, and then then Julie turned to her, and said, "You never said it back."

"What?"

"You know what." For the first time, Julie seemed a little bashful, a little shy. She bit her lip, and, despite the fact that she was naked, it somehow ended up looking more innocent than sinful.

"Oh," Maddie said, and the words came easily. "I think I'm a little bit in love with you, too."

Julie smiled, and she was the sunrise.

_Dear Maddie,_

_I spent every fucking minute that I wasn't with you or working studying the bible._

_Spent all my time making sure that I knew everything a crazy fucking religious extremist would know. _

_Trying so hard to learn to act like one, and then trying so hard _not_ to act like one when I was with you.  
_

_You never noticed, so I guess we know which one I was better at._

_Julie_

It became a routine, and it was so easy to hide, because staying in each other's hotel rooms wasn't anything that they hadn't been doing before.

When they were in Paris, they were together. When they weren't, when they were at work, or in England, then nobody had to know. Both of them seemed to agree to that without needing to say anything. There was clearly a reason neither of them had been out at work before. It worked for both of them - and then when they were together, when the doors were closed and there was no one else around, it was like the time apart didn't exist.

Sparks flew, and Maddie fell deeper, and deeper, and everything was perfect - until it wasn't.

It started when Maddie finally mustered up the courage to actually say it. To say that she loved her, to say that she cared and that this was real and that she hoped Julie felt the same way.

And Julie... Julie hesitated. She hesitated. She said it back, but she hesitated, and Maddie didn't understand, because Julie had been the one that pushed them, that made the first move, and now there was... this.

She said it back. She said it back, and then she kissed Maddie, and although Maddie knew what Julie sounded like when she was lying, and knew that it wasn't like that, there was still hesitation. Something had changed, and Maddie didn't know what, didn't know if she'd done something, or if something had happened to Julie that she didn't understand.

_Dear Maddie,_

_I mentioned a girlfriend. That's what I did. I mentioned having a girlfriend. It was a slip up. _

_You were supposed to be Max._

_I said Maddie. Blew my cover right away._

_I don't blame you. I was the idiot in love._

_Julie_

Neither of them mentioned it the next morning. Neither of them mentioned it at all. Maddie just didn't say it again. Didn't give Julie another opportunity to hesitate.

That worked, for a while, but Maddie could feel something between them, could feel the distance between them widening, and that distance only widened when, one morning, she wakes up, and Julie isn't there. She isn't just in the shower, she's gone.

Maddie found a text on her phone, short, but more than apologetic, telling her that a relation in Paris got sick, that she needed to go see her.

Julie had never mentioned anything about a relation in Paris, but then, she never talked much about her family, so Maddie just about let it slide.

Just about let it slide, until Julie didn't turn up to a date they had planned in Paris. Didn't answer her phone, didn't give any sort of answer until the next morning, when, again, all Maddie got was a rushed apology via text.

_Dear Maddie,_

_I'm sorry. I've told them so much. MI6 thought BA was a good cover job for me. _

_That the knowledge I would have would be attractive to them. It sure was. I've told them so much. _

_Please forgive me. _

_I love you,_

_Julie_

It would've stayed a mystery.

Sometimes, Maddie wished it had stayed a mystery. Wished that they had just fallen apart. Wished that Julie hadn't been in the shower, that her phone hadn't rang, that she hadn't dug around her bag to find a phone that very much _wasn't_ the one Maddie was used to seeing.

A phone that refused to let her answer it without Julie's fingerprint.

A phone that Maddie was still sitting, staring at, when, ten minutes later, Julie emerged from the bathroom, a towel around her body. It felt so much like the first time they had kissed. But, at the same time, it was a million miles away from the first time they kissed.

"Why do you have a second phone," Maddie asked, her voice low. She only knew of one reason why people had second phones they didn't tell people about. "Are you secretly _married_ or something? You never tell me anything about your family. Am I your little gay secret?" She hated how bitter she sounded, but she couldn't help it. Julie was hiding something. She should've known that from the beginning, from how cagey she'd been.

Julie was so good at being loud, and cheerful, and welcoming, that it had been so easy to ignore the fact that she never let on anything about herself.

It wasn't easy to ignore it anymore.

"And don't say it's a work phone, because I know it isn't. The phones they give out don't look like this. And they don't even _give_ the attendants work phones. Plus, this bloody phone is more high tech than any phone I've seen. What the _fuck_ are you hiding, Julie?"

All that time, Julie had been silent. When Maddie looked up at her, begging for an answer that didn't blow them apart, Julie sighed, said, "Can you- Can you let me get dressed? And then I'll tell you everything."

Maddie nodded. Julie got dressed. It didn't feel like either of them are breathing. It didn't feel like there was any air in the room left _to_ breathe.

When Julie sat down next to Maddie on the bed, her hands were twisting in her lap. "I'm sorry. I should've told you so long ago. I mean, fuck, I shouldn't have done this at all, but that kinda went out the window the second you walked into the bar. Fucking hell, Maddie, everything was so much easier when I thought you were straight." There was a weak smile on Julie's face, but Maddie could hardly bear to look at it. Knew that if she did, her resolve would crumble."

"Told me what, Julie? Told me _what_? Because if you're about to tell me about a secret husband, I'd love it if you did it quick."

"Fuck, no. Not that. I would never have- No. The thing is. I'm not a flight attendant. I mean, I am, but... not really. I'm- I'm an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service. MI6. I'm a..." Julie winced, "I'm a spy. God it sounds so fucking stupid saying that. I never _have_ to say it because I'm not supposed to tell anyone. I shouldn't be telling anyone. You can't tell anyone, otherwise I'm gonna lose my job. But I... I have feelings for you, Maddie, and I never said it back, not properly, because I always knew I was going to have to leave and I wanted to make that easier, but I could never make myself leave, and now it's D-Day, and I gotta go, but... I want to come back to you. It's only a matter of time before my cover is blown on this job. I went into this knowing it would be my last. When it's over... I want to come back to you."

It was so much to process, so much to think about that for a minute, for another endless stretch of time, Maddie just sat there, silent. She believed it. It made sense. If anyone was a spy, it would be Julie, clever Julie, funny Julie, charming, multilingual, pacifying Julie. She didn't need proof. She knew Julie wasn't lying, because there was a tone to her voice that had never been there before.

"Maddie?" Julie's voice was soft, and then there was a hand on Maddies's, small and familiar, and, for a second, Maddie wanted to grab onto it, to hold on and never let go. But she didn't. She pulled away.

"You lied to me. About everything."

"No." Julie shook her head. "Nothing but my job. Nothing. Strictly my name is Julia Lindsay MacKenzie Wallace Beaufort-Stuart, but everyone calls me Julie. Nothing. I lied about nothing else. I never lied about how I feel about you. Never."

Maddie wished it was enough.

It wasn't.

"I can't stand liars," she said. "Leave. Please. I'll see you at work."  Julie started to protest, but Maddie raised a hand. "Please. Just leave."

_Dear Maddie,_

_I'm sorry I got you into this mess._

_Julie_

It was only when Julie didn't show up the next day that Maddie remembered what she'd said, about how close she'd gotten to having to leave, about what she'd said about going undercover.

_Dear Maddie,_

_I don't know if you'll ever get these letters. The only reason they're still letting me write them and keep them is everything I'm telling them._

_I was never cut out to be a spy._

_Julie_

Maddie didn't hear anything for months. And then, one day, she opened her mail, and there was a note, typed on thick cream paper.

_Dear Ms. Brodatt,_

_During a raid on an extremist Christian group in Paris, one of our own, Julia Beaufort-Stuart, was, unfortunately, killed. She had been taken hostage by this group when her cover was blown. During her time in captivity, she wrote a number of letters, almost all of them to you. These letters have been enclosed. She also chose you as her next of kin. Her will expressed the wish that you return her belongings to her family home in Scotland._

_ We thought you might like to know that, despite what the letters profess, from the documents we recovered from the building they were operating out of, Ms Beaufort-Stuart did not, in fact, reveal any classified information about MI6, or your employer.  _

_ She was an excellent liar. _

_ We are very sorry for your loss. _

It took Maddie almost a month to stop grieving. She didn't think it would've affected her this much, but it did. It took her two months to psych herself up to go to Julie's apartment, to pick out the few things that she knew for sure had sentimental value to Julie, and another two to make her way up to Scotland.

She had no idea what she was going to find there. No idea what her family knew.

No idea why she was really going.

Part of her still hated Julie.

Part of her was still desperately in love with her.

She didn't know what to expect when she knocked on the door of the _mansion_ that was Julie's family home. But she knew that what she certainly _wasn't_ expecting was for the door to open, and Julie to be behind it.

Alive, and standing in front of her. Maddie drops the box she was holding. Julie doesn't even blink.

"Hi," Julie said. "MI6 had to kill me to get me out. They were never going to agree to any sort of hostage transfer, not with all the information I was giving them. They shot me, made it look really bloody real. It hurt like a bitch for months. Having you grieve was the last piece of the puzzle. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?"

"Really, really fucking sorry. This wasn't how I wanted to come back to you. I was supposed to get out easy. Not like this."

"You got out, though," Maddie said. "You're out, right?" Julie nodded. "For good?" Julie nodded again. "Are you still healing?"

Julie looked confused, but answered the question. "I'm back to ship-shape. Well. As ship shape as I'm ever going to be with a stitched-up bullet wound in my abdomen."

"That's good enough," Maddie said.

"Good enough for what?" Julie asked, and Maddie didn't answer, just surged forward, capturing Julie's lips with her own, pushing her backwards into the house, and hoping with all her heart that no one was about to walk through that ginormous hallway, because she couldn't wait any longer.

"You're a bastard," she mumbled against Julie's lips.

"You're kissing me," Julie pointed out.

"Still a bastard."

_Dear Maddie,_

_Kiss me, Hardy._

_Julie_

"You know, when MI6 were raiding the house. When I didn't know if I was going to die in the extraction or not, all I could think of was Admiral Nelson. And that I wished you were there. I wished you were there so I could make everything right, but, selfishly, I just wanted you _there_. For me."

If Maddie hadn't spent every second of that first month grieving poring over Julie's letters, trying to find every possible meaning in them, she wouldn't have known what Julie meant.

But, she had, and, as they laid there, in Julie's stupidly big bed, in her ridiculously big bedroom, the curtains drawn on the four poster, she knew what Julie meant. She knew that it would be a while before everything was even close to being right again, but she also knew that she was in love.

And so, Maddie kissed her.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope this worked as a modern au/fix it/vague spy story trying to keep the emotions of the original there but not make it a carbon copy. i haven't read the book in a while so i really hope it worked and it wasn't too messy bc lord knows the writers block was real.


End file.
